The Course Of True Love Never Did Run Smooth
by PercabethSkyewardClace13ore
Summary: Basically, Grant Ward gets to live again. In a way that is decidedly not the way he envisioned it. It's a redemp fic of a sort - how do you classify this without giving it away? So hard, just read it. Okay? Then judge.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is a filler while I prepare the various sequels I've promised, and the rest of my old stories for updating, which I have decided to continue, with rather slow updates, I'm afraid, but will be quicker when my cousins go away, and if I don't go anywhere anytime soon. I realize starting another story isn't smart or wise, but in the spirit of some New Year's Resolutions, I have decided to wing it.**

He was like an ant without a queen,

a ghost of the man he used to be,

Stuck like a fly in a jar,

Because the man who was his master has gone afar (to the murky depths of hell)

Debts repaid.

But he can't move on.

The man who was his master took everything he came to hold dear in all those months.

Even Skye.

Skye, the light of his life, his raison d'etre,

He was- no, is- her protector, that was how it was supposed to be.

The Robot and the Rookie.

They were going to go on cheesy dates, have a glamorous wedding, and little dark-haired, chocolate-eyed kids running around on a lawn with toys scattered everywhere, shrieking with delight as they cried 'Mommy!' and 'Daddy!'.

They were supposed to grow old together, laughing on a porch swing, still very much in love.

They would take their last breaths together, his Rookie and her Robot, into a realm of eternal life, laughing the infinite time away with countless games of Battleship, Chess, and so on.

But their future was wrenched from them by a fate-meddling evil, sadistic, crazy, twisted, ugly monster of a psychopath.

Things have a way of trying to align themselves again, he tells himself, hanging onto his last drop of hope.

The gravity pulling the drop down knows better.

He's stuck in this hellhole.

Skye will never EVER love him.

He is destined to rot for all he's done.

So he closes his eyes a lot, on the small cot of a bed, and imagines what could have been.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: This chapter is a realisation that I can't exactly leave you guys hanging on a god-awful poem. It's short, because I don't want you to hate this story. So thoughts? Please review, or do something that's not nothing**.** Now updated and fixed.**

He wakes up. On a bed, with actual sheets.

What the hell?

Where is the hard prison cot with the uneven mattress and the grey walls?

These walls are white.

Admittedly, he's been paired with a needle in his arm an a pulse-reader on his finger, as well as a bunch of electrodes on his chest.

"Oh great. You're awake!" Simmons says, quite happily. "Skye, wake up! Ward's up!"

I turn to see Skye, beautiful and sleepy as ever, wake up and yawn in the chair next to my bed.

"Hey Robot." She says with a lazy smile.

I froze. "Excuse me, what did you just say?"

"Well, the tin man appears to be deaf too. I said, 'Hey Robot'."

"No, you hate me. You both do. Simmons, you threatened to kill me. Skye, you shot me multiple times, then left me to bleed out."

"Skye, talk to him, his pulse is spiking, and he's very agitated about something." Simmons walks to go get something very fast.

She sits on the side of my hospital bed. I back away from her.

"Hey, what's wrong?" She asks me.

"Okay. I'm dead. I've got to be dead. But if I'm dead, you're dead, so who killed you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." She says, then scoots closer. I move away again.

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND?" My voice breaks on the last word.

"Well, typically, it's not my job to know Secret Service muscle like you, but I can honestly say I think you may have gone nuts." She jokes, trying for a smile.

"No. No. Do you remember being shot, twice, in the stomach?" I ask.

"Okay. Nope." She quickly straightens and lifts the bottom of her tank for a few seconds, letting me see the unscarred creamy white skin.

This is surreal. I feel like crying. Finally, after a very long awkward silence, I ask, "Two questions. One, why I am I in the med bay? And two, what date is it?"

"After Elliot Randolph, the totally nuts professor went away, you had an episode", she uses finger quotation marks to illustrate this, "so you went into a coma, and for 3 days, you've been asleep. You drove me nuts. I seriously considered hacking your programming, but I thought Fury might put me in the Fridge for that, so I didn't, and just read comics and played Angry Birds and Despicable Me Run on my phone, besides sleeping, but I can proudly say I stayed here for 72 or so hours, and" She smells her underarms in an entirely comic way that nearly made me laugh," I really, really need a shower. But I brought deodorant down, so I'm cool for the moment. Today is the 28th of March, 2013."

"No. You arrested me in September. I reside in Vault D. Fitz has brain impairment, and I promised to never lie to you again. Oh crap. I am dead. So dead."

"You are seriously starting to sound crazy. I'm gonna get Simmons, but you have to give me a hug first. Or I will sit on you till you give me a real hug."

"Skye, please. You hate me. You shot me. I kidnapped you. Please remember."

"I remember the kidnapping. You don't exactly forget it when you're stolen out of your van and made to walk in a plane, and a dark grey cage."

I curl up into a ball. Skye wraps her arms around me. Well, as far as she can reach anyway. Then I realise, Skye doesn't hate me, and I have a chance to make things right. I shrug Skye's arms off, and she's about to reply with a snarky comment, but I hug her tight.

At that moment of wherever I am at, I have a chance to stop myself from making the bad choices influenced by Garrett.

**A/N: [Cue weird eyebrow wiggling that either makes me look like a paedophile or a really bad French imitation of a mime, or both.]**

**So how about those words, eh? XD Just kidding. You are your own person, and if I cannot sway you to write what you thought, well I just have to suck it up, don't I? No offense or snark intended. Purely for sarcasm. For the last joke I mean. And things just got awkward, which I magnify the awkwardness of by ten percent just by mentioning it. [Awkward whistling]**

**Me: Oh look, a unicorn!**

**You: [turns around and looks, only to be treated to a rainy sky]**

**Me: [runs away]**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This is a filler chapter, sort of, while I literally do a juggling act with the other stories that I need to update. Things like Ghosts Haunt You, and A Look Upon Death will be updated in due time, but it doesn't help that when I sit down to write, I end up with like two new half-stories and [blows a raspberry]. **

_I'm sure how I got here. Was I exposed to something Asgardian, or a gadget from FitzSimmons?_

These thoughts plague my head as I get the all-clear from Simmons, and go to make myself a sandwich.

I see Skye on the couch, purple ear-buds in and leaning against the seat rest with tablet in hand and blanket everywhere else. It was good to see her laugh again.

I sit on the couch, whereupon she immediately hands me an ear-bud and a patch of blanket, and resumes the video.

It's a 'Harry Potter Spoof'. I start laughing too, a real laugh.

She puts her head on my shoulder, and I put mine on hers, and take one of her hands, and just hold it.

I'm content with everything, sandwich forgotten.

We stay like that for along time, even after we have both fallen asleep.

I wake up to Coulson clearing his throat. Skye stirs in my arms, which shifted in our nap, as have hers, curled around my waist.

"Hey Robot." She yawns, and rubs her eyes with fists.

Coulson gives me a death glare, the kind I am used to by now, but with an element of playfulness I recognize from the old days, which is now, I guess, but I quickly retract my arms all the same.

"Yes, sir?" I ask, my voice formal.

"We have a mission. It regards a woman named-"

"Hannah Hutchins?" I ask.

He nods, slowly. "How did you know that? That was classified Level 7 information."

"Um, supernatural things keep happening to her, and she's a scientist at a- was it a particle accelerator plant?"

"There is no way-"

"That I could know that? We're going to pick her up now. And the supernatural force is literally a man. I think his name is Tobias Ford."

"I'll go look him up." Skye says, and flounces off to wherever she's going.

I stare after her, speechless, jaw hanging slightly open, and mouth dry.

Coulson clears his throat. "So, you and Skye, huh?"

My face turns beetroot red, and I stutter, "Well, I don't know, sir." Was that disappointment in his eyes? No, it couldn't be.

"You talk to her." I nod once, and he walks away.

I sit back down on the couch, mainly to think.

"Ward!" Skye yells from down below.

"Coming!" Sometimes I swear that she will be the death of me, I think, as I walk downstairs to the cargo bay.

Skye is looking at the giant TV in the lab. The other usual occupants aren't here, maybe in their bunks or something.

"How did you know about this?" She asks.

"I have no idea. I know I was in the future or something, then I wake up, and I'm here. I'm not kidding. HYDRA has infiltrated SHIELD since it was made, and its still alive. In the future I make some bad choices. Garrett is my old SO, and he took me out of prison when I was a teen, then left me in the woods for six months. You know this in the future. I had a dog called Buddy for company, and then he tried to make me shoot him. But I couldn't do it, and so he shot him and started to beat me. I joined SHIELD, still loyal to John, but I didn't know that much about HYDRA, only that it was going to do something big when threatened. So when HYDRA rises, Garrett will be here. I just need you to know," I go closer to her, until I'm standing right in front of her, "that I will always protect you. I will never ever lie to you." I kiss her forehead.

"Okay. But just to ruin the moment, can you tell me about it later?"

I chuckle. "Sure thing, Rookie."

**A/N: So, fluff in exchange for reviews, and angst in exchange for no reviews? XP**

**No? Okay.**


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